


Conflux

by kkamagui



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkamagui/pseuds/kkamagui
Summary: No matter the wound, no matter the killing blow, his body always manages to piece itself together without issue. Sometimes he wishes the scars would last, if only to remind him that he is making progress. That timehaspassed and he isn’t stuck in some eternal loop, damned to relive the joys and horrors of everything.So here Zagreus lies in a pool of blood, rather uncomfortably might he add, contemplating life, death and all the fun in-betweens.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 94





	Conflux

**Author's Note:**

> just wanted to write tech-horror chaos and then yea
> 
> spoilers for final boss

* * *

Zagreus drags himself out of the Styx entryway, still partially unformed. His jaw clicks into position, red sluicing off of him in patterns reminiscent of webs. What appears to be scrap metal and wiring follows the motion of his body and locks onto his legs, his arms. Laced with electricity, they crawl up the length of his limbs, disappearing beneath the folds of his clothing. When the fingers on his left hand finally twitch into place, Zagreus throws his head back and wipes the remaining liquid off his face.

His skin comes back next, starting from his core and regenerating outward. By the time he walks past Hypnos without a word, all save the area surrounding his right eye have a finished coat of synthetic skin. No worse for wear, back to square one.

“Stygius,” he calls, and the photon edge scrapes out of the rust and chemical with a sharp, metallic cry. It slices through the holo circuitry of ghosts in a neat, lambent red line before coming to rest in his palm, crackling with energy. The scattered ghosts reassemble, the pieces of their transparent bodies fusing in quiet agony. They loom over him like long shadows, awaiting someone _very_ sore right now.

He doesn’t pay attention to the stares and odd looks directed at him. A quick glance toward the end of the hall reveals an emptiness that stirs at the forlorn anger in his chest. 

Despite everything—despite how his mind-metal body had been shorn to shreds and all his circuitry had unspooled with death—his most recent memory logs are intact. He glimpses through them on his way to the west wing, reliving the visions of the white endlessness of cold; blinding, grinning green skulls; his father and a shining, ethereal doorway.

“You’re back,” Achilles greets him. He seems to pause, taking in the crooked, griefed slant of Zagreus’ shoulders. His gaze gentles slightly. “I’m glad you’re safe, lad.”

Zagreus feels fit to burst into flames and burn down everything around him, so great is his frustration and sorrow. But he stifles it and gives what he hopes is a passable grin. “Good to be back,” he says, but his voice cracks at the end. He sighs. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Achilles says. He pauses again, considering Zagreus. “Come here, then,” he says, opening his arms. Zagreus nearly falls into the embrace from how quickly he rushes to accept it. He squeezes Achilles tight for several long moments. His mentor simply waits, patting his head idly.

When he finally steps back, his chest feels less like it is trying to contain a storm. Less like he is breathing in nothing but embers and ash. Zagreus meets Achilles’ knowing eyes and smiles. “Be seeing you,” he says, and he’s off again.

* * *

Zagreus has stopped consciously trying to keep track of how many times he has gone through all the layers and secrets of the system. His data core stubbornly reminds him he is well into the double digits, with a detailed log of all the modifications and overrides he collects before he inevitably is struck down. If he had broken into the administrative chambers to snag an extra processing unit or two for these functions, well. No one else needs to know.

Tartarus, with all its ghostly green flames, is oddly chilly. Not in the same way as the tantalizing near-surface; it is something more like bone-deep weariness, the taste of acid and rust wherever he turns, the system’s ravenous need to feast and _feast_. It stirs a gnawing discomfort in him, one that he has long grown used to.

He accepts Artemis’ message in one of Tartarus’ many dreary hallways. She speaks of the surface and its great, open skies; the plains of green that sway like an ocean with the wind; a world where he need not fear the endless, all-consuming blood.

“I simply cannot wait to see you,” she says, voice ringing like bells. And not for the first time, he is glad they cannot truly see him. Him and all his facial expressions that tend to be overly pensive or haggard whenever they reach him. He doubts they would be overly joyous, seeing the mess the system has made of him and his temper.

Soothing, Artemis’ blessings rush into him like a gust of wind. Zagreus instantly feels lighter on his feet as the modifications take effect, like he could soar into the heart of battle and strike the enemies through with one true thrust of his sword.

He cuts through Megaera again, watching as her physical body shatters on the ground. Blue and golden wires spill forth, writhing and wriggling disturbingly within their metal cages before everything is swept away in a stinging deluge. Zagreus watches as the red hungrily swallows her unseeing eyes and cracked face whole. It cascades over her body and devours before sinking low, then disappears without a trace.

With a sour taste in his mouth, Zagreus steps past the emptiness and ascends.

Zagreus feels Thanatos’ presence before he sees it, as usual. The eerie green atmosphere bends as Thanatos warps into reality, carrying with him the weight of a hundred different worlds. The smell of sulfur fades the slightest bit, dulled by death and silence and the swirling hum of time around them.

“Hey, Than,” he greets winningly. Thanatos frowns, easily one of his most charming qualities, and does not quite respond. That’s alright. Zagreus is content just looking at him, if Thanatos is not willing to speak.

Thanatos brandishes his weapon, turning his back on Zagreus, but only just. Enough to keep an eye on him should things go awry. Zagreus makes no effort to hide his grin as monsters crawl out of the circuit work, sightless and electrified. Eager to tear him apart limb by limb.

Stygius hums as he skirts in and around the battlefield. He and Thanatos have never quite fought side by side, not outside of Zagreus’ innumerable escape attempts anyway. Only in bouts of casual sparring, but even those tend to be rare since Thanatos is never around. His entire being thrills whenever darkness pools beneath his feet, vanquishing foes at his six and leaving his skin prickling with anticipation. 

Oddly enough, Thanatos stays long enough after the room is cleared for Zagreus to start a conversation.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he says. And well, Zagreus has never been the _best_ at conversation. Thanatos simply looks at him, as many people have been doing, nowadays. His eyes are just shy of accusing.

Thanatos frowns, the glow of his eyes spilling golden hues onto his face. In the fiery lighting of Asphodel, it sets his hair aflame and his jawline in sharp relief; from far away he might look an ominous skull and black weapons floating in the air, waiting. “They would remake you,” he says, staring at the distinct coloring of modifications tracing Zagreus’ wirings. They glow green, the color of a hunter.

Zagreus tries not to think about how Thanatos has come to that conclusion. He isn’t for certain he could survive as he is—on the surface, that is—without the system to keep all the mental and emotional and spiritual wiring in place. No one, to his knowledge, has dug in too deep on the technicalities and esoteric nature of their existence. Er, nonexistence? Or something in between.

“They might believe that,” he says. Thanatos’ expression twists again, as it usually does when Zagreus decides to open his mouth and say the first thing on his mind. “But they don’t know the truth, Than.”

  
“It makes no difference to us,” Thanatos hisses, venomous in his quiet rage.

He exhales slowly, like breathing out too quickly will banish Thanatos to the wind, leaving nothing but farewells in his wake.

Instead of saying anything, he moves in slightly, giving enough warning with his movements as he leans in to give Thanatos a hug. With the way Thanatos is floating, Zagreus can hear the whirring of his core mechanisms tick up a notch.

With a resigned sigh, Thanatos brings one hand up to tousle through Zagreus’ hair, drifting down to thumb at the coarse metal around his right eye. It's an old, familiar gesture. A large part of him wishes dearly they could stay this way for longer than a brief moment, but as soon as Zagreus entertains the thought Thanatos is already pulling away.

“You will come find me again, won’t you?” Zagreus asks, and knows it is the wrong thing to say. The hand cupping his jaw drops as Thanatos closes himself off again, eyes glinting like steel. His jaw is set stubbornly as he floats just the slightest bit higher.

“Goodbye, Zagreus,” he says, and disappears. Zagreus wets his lips and tastes only ozone and static.

* * *

Thanatos finds him half-drowning in the shallow end of the red Styx, lying face-up to stare at nothing in particular. No matter the wound, no matter the killing blow, his body always manages to piece itself together without issue. Sometimes he wishes the scars would last, if only to remind him that he is making progress. That time _has_ passed and he isn’t stuck in some eternal loop, damned to relive the joys and horrors of everything.

So here Zagreus lies in a pool of blood, rather uncomfortably might he add, contemplating life, death and all the fun in-betweens.

“Zag,” Thanatos says. He sounds no different from his usual level of unimpressed, but Zagreus can hear the slightest edge of _really, what_ in Thanatos’ voice. He lolls his head to the side. Half of his vision is immediately obscured, leaving his left eye to gaze soulfully upward. “What are you doing.”

Unfortunately for himself, Zagreus usually talks before he thinks, so he ends up with a mouthful of red and sputters instead. He sits up straight after he stops coughing, meeting Thanatos’ equally unimpressed and exasperated stare. His smile feels disgusting. Red is dripping down his chin and has probably stained his teeth.

“Hey there, Than.”

For a moment or two, the dead silence between them grows awkward enough that Zagreus prepares to stand up on his own. But then Thanatos heaves a small sigh and extends a hand to pull him up. Zagreus doesn’t let go of Thanatos’ hand once he is standing.

“I have to go, Zag,” Thanatos says tiredly, but he does not let go, either.

“Okay, okay,” Zagreus insists, tightening his grip. “One moment.” He steps back slightly, not yet letting go though he knows Thanatos could disappear and leave him grasping air. After a few seconds of rustling through his clothes, he finds what he is looking for. Opens up Thanatos’ palm and presses the dense mass of energy into it.

Thanatos does not say anything, though his brow quirks up. He makes no motion to reject the gift, which Zagreus will take as a victory. For a moment he looks between the conflux and Zagreus’ eager face, then tucks it away and vanishes without a word.

Zagreus sighs. Better get back to it then.

* * *

He dies a lot after that. Kills his father. Nearly goes all the way until his entire being is rent apart by the seams by some unseen, cruel force. Comes back disassembled through the Styx and tries to crawl out before his limbs have even fully reconstructed. Hypnos jokes, idly, that he will get nightmares of Zagreus’ half-formed body dragging itself down the hallway, right eye shining brighter than fresh blood, dead set on one goal.

Sometimes, Zagreus feels as though he needs to rush. Like he needs to get out of the system faster than it can put him back together well and whole. As though every time the system pulls back all his memories and flesh and metal into one piece, he will be trapped again.

In between deaths, he goes to sink into the void, tumbling down freefall until he hits whatever semblance of floor Chaos has decided to replicate at that time. Sometimes he will float down gently, passing through films of nothing until he meets Chaos eye to eye. Other times, like now, he will land on his face and blink past all the warnings that pop up in his feed, nursing his bruised jaw.

Zagreus picks himself off the cool flooring with a pained groan. It is dark; the sheer expanse is illuminated only by the light of his fire and sword.

He steps toward nothing, where a monstrous mass of cables and scrap metal and organic horror surely awaits. Flees the noise and seeks wherever it is the quietest and most chilling. A lone red light blinks in the distance, beckoning. He goes closer.

Chaos opens their eyes.

Eyes. So many eyes.

All the distant lights above and below come to life, trapping him within a small cosmos. He imagines this is what the night sky would look like, solemn and glittering above a still sea. Though less frightful, perhaps.

Chaos speaks. As always, they bend their guttural, terrifying voice into something more reminiscent of regular speech. Even still, Zagreus’ ears ring with thousands of unknowable whispers.

_YOU HAVE VENTURED FAR, YOUNG ZAGREUS._

Chaos watches him. Though Zagreus focuses on the glowing red eye before him, he knows that all of the other eyes, too, are trained on him and him alone. In a manner of speaking, he is the center of the universe, for now. _FAR AND OUT OF MY REACH_.

“Not far enough,” he says, grimacing when his voice echoes loudly across the empty space. Chaos’ body twists and rumbles before him, constantly shifting and flickering and incomprensible. In the absolute silence of the void, his voice is always too loud, too much. “Let’s get on with it then.”

The world spins, streaking around him in hundreds, thousands of trailing lights. All of Chaos’ eyes glimmer. As his body tingles with foreign electricity and a remorseless, cool touch, it takes a while for Zagreus to realize the strange noise around him is Chaos’ laughter. Chaos is not cruel, no, but they are everything and infinite. Maybe to the one and only nothing, his plight seems meaningless.

He feels the overrides slink into his core, resting there uneasily. He always feels odd for the next few rooms before they ease fully into his system.

Just as Zagreus is about to drag himself out of the void, Chaos speaks again.

_YOU HAVE BEEN AVOIDING DEATH, IT SEEMS._ When Zagreus hesitates, Chaos laughs again. _OR RATHER, DEATH HAS BEEN AVOIDING YOU_.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Zagreus sighs, thinking of Thanatos’ betrayed gaze through an impassive, stony face. How after many ventures to near-freedom he has been struck down again, again and again. Thanatos is death; surely he knows, surely he feels every single time Zagreus comes so close to succeeding and fails, only to try again. Does it pain him? Or does he feel nothing? Would anyone remember him a thousand years after his successful escape?

He turns to look at Chaos, whose red eye shines with a light so powerful and unsettling it seems the whole system is awash with blood.

_YOU CANNOT RUN FOREVER_ , Chaos says. And as Zagreus steps back into Elysium, the darkness shatters around him.

* * *

He visits Chaos again, after some deaths he would rather not think about. 

Not just because running up and up and being sent crashing down is mixed kinds aggravating and exhilarating, but because, well. Chaos is quiet, in a strange way. They know everything, they know too much. Zagreus cannot parse what he is thinking half of the time, much less try and put it into words. Chaos sees him. It means less talking and failing trying to express something he isn’t sure can be done with words anyways.

Chaos turns Zagreus inside out with their many eyes and keeps blessedly silent. In the silence, they overwrite something in his system. It makes him feel heavier with the promise of something sweet should he survive long enough. 

“Hey,” he says to the void.

Something in the central mass of Chaos shifts, causing a noise that causes his hairs to stand on end. The red eye that had been half-lidded is now wide open, bathing him in crimson glow.

_YOUNG ZAGREUS,_ oblivion responds. The chamber echoes with whispers and screams and the sound of metal scraping over rubble. Amidst the starry-eyed—oh, that’s a good one—expanse of nothingness, Zagreus feels an odd sort of calm. The urgency boiling through him fades, if only just.

“I don’t know what to say to him,” he says finally. “Too much and he’s gone. Too little and he’s angry.” Everyone else, at least, seems resigned to one reaction. Death cannot seem to decide between trying to make him stay, and trying to say last words every time they meet.

That strange noise again. Chaos’ laughter.

_WE NEED NOT SPEAK TO KNOW, DO WE?_ Chaos says. 

Zagreus gives Chaos’ main eye as much as a disapproving look as he can to the one and only true origin of everything. “Thanatos cannot read my mind. I’d be more than embarrassed if he could.”

_HE KNOWS ENOUGH. SIMPLY DO AS YOU WILL._

As the oppressive crush of nothingness falls away, leaving him half-blind in the blue haven of Elysium, Zagreus feels the stirrings of the world bending out of shape. The air crackles where Thanatos appears. He stares, still trying to get his bearings after having Chaos override some of his settings. He cannot remember when last Thanatos had come to find him, with both of their occupied schedules and all. Thanatos with his grueling work and brooding both on and off the clock. Zagreus with, well. Everything. Or nothing, depending on who is asking.

There is no time to talk. Already the monsters peel off the walls and crawl through the floor, filled with the voracious need to destroy him. Zagreus eyes Thanatos in between swings of his sword, trying to determine whether the tension in his shoulders is the good or bad kind. The battle grows more frenzied and Zagreus stops caring and stops keeping count. 

He gets the last of the creatures. Sticks his sword straight into the hollow of its throat when it is down and grinds its skull into dust. Silence swells around him as the anguished cries cease, and Zagreus turns his head to see Thanatos observing him.

Without thinking, he is already moving in close. Zagreus doesn’t bother handing Thanatos the gift this time. Looking him dead in the eyes, Zagreus instead presses the swirling mess of power directly into Thanatos’ chest, watching as it sinks in slowly, filling his circuits with energy. Thanatos remains mostly motionless throughout it, his only tell the twitch of his fingers as his eyes glow brighter than the stars. His mouth opens the slightest bit, like he is trying to breathe in without making a noise. His expression almost looks pained.

“Zag,” he says once Zagreus’ palm is flat against his chest, and he sounds breathless. His body is aglow, body racing with ribbons of excess energy that don’t know where to go. Zagreus feels his lips part wordlessly and, darkness, Thanatos sounds _miserable._

“Missed you, Than,” says Zagreus, voice hoarse. 

Thanatos sinks onto the ground and leans in to hug him tightly. Everywhere he touches on Zagreus’ skin sears like fire and all the emotions Thanatos keeps so tightly controlled. Like Zagreus is about to disappear and he will never get a chance to say goodbye again.

The pulsing blue heart in Thanatos’ hand sinks invisible teeth into Zagreus and feels like simultaneously the worst and best thing of his life. Red weaves around and between them, swallowing the destruction left in their wake. Not for the first time, shame sinks its claws into Zagreus' gut as he's reminded of everyone at home and the loneliness of freedom.

“I’ll see you at home,” Thanatos says, refusing to meet Zagreus' eyes. Like he's torn between anger and betrayal and loss. He clears his throat. “Zagreus.”

“I won’t be long.”

* * *

He vanquishes his father, again. Watches as the red river comes to collect and treats his father no differently than anyone else. Zagreus stares into the flayed cables, splintered chassis and dead stillness of his father’s gaze before the red swarms over and takes it away. 

The pillars and destroyed bits of framework slowly rebuild themselves, as though nothing had ever happened in the first place. Within minutes all the havoc he had reaped is corrected into a harsh, unforgiving perfection.

Zagreus doesn’t head to the door just yet. 

The river that rushes past him now is nearly translucent; he does not try to sink into it now, knowing that it would simply eat away at his flesh and leave him a dripping, walking corpse. Instead he seats himself on the edge of existence, looking over the vast and colored verticality the worlds paint below him. Flickers of green and oozing reds, wisps of blue that all twist and churn into the cold whiteness he sits on now. 

The entirety of his body crackles with static and storm, and the air around him is rife with charged energy. He is so close to the actual skies, here. He can nearly taste the lightning Zeus offers. His whole body shakes with the force of it. Even though he is trying to sit still, Zagreus is trembling. If he thinks too much about it, the storm churning inside of him starts to hurt.

The doorway glows as it usually does, leaving his vision prickling with blue from a foreign light so blinding. Although he is no longer in the deepest reaches of the system, there is still a foul taste of his mouth that will not wash away. He knows it will not until he dies, again, to be reborn and reconstructed in a flurry of scrap and blood, wires twisted into some semblance of a mortal heart.

But perhaps it will not. Maybe he will make it across this time. Maybe all the farewells he’s said and done will count for something. He sits up and drags himself through the threshold, just in case.

* * *


End file.
